Project: ONLINE COURSE TEMPLATE
As Senior Instructional Designer at the University of Illinois, I managed a department that created online courses in the arts. To make our work more efficient, I started with a simple idea: create a basic course template to make building courses faster.
Then I thought, maybe this is an opportunity. My team should think about the "how" and "why" of what we do, and aim to improve more than just our productivity and course building speed.
So, let’s see what we can do better. ✨🚀
Project overview 🗺️
Due to budget issues, my team had gotten smaller but our workload hadn't. We needed to be able to create online courses faster while maintaining quality standards.
We also had a design system that wasn't really standardized, and hadn't changed in about 6 years. We wanted modernize our course designs to improve student engagement and usability. Key to these improvements was developing content standards.
My role + project duration
Role: Senior Instructional Designer
Duties 💼
• Research
• Information Architecture
• Visual design
• Front-end development
• Testing
Team 👥: 3 part-time instructional design assistants and myself
Duration 🗓️: January – November 2018
Main challenge🏅
Create a course design system and a template that is:
• 🔥 fun & engaging for students.
• 🛠️ easily customized by faculty.
• 💪 empowering for my team doing more with less.
User research📈
Our course software—Compass—didn't provide detailed usage analytics, so we relied on other research methods to collect usability data. These methods included:
• Interviews with faculty users
• Surveys for student users
• Customer support data for both user types
Default course
This is what faculty users were given when creating a new course in Compass.
This is what faculty users were given when creating a new course in Compass.
It was busy, and though it listed the basic steps for adding content, it didn't offer much guidance on the types of content to add and why.
New course template
This is what faculty users were given when creating a course using our new template.
This is what faculty users were given when creating a course using our new template.
Faculty aren't always accustomed to taking the student experience into account when creating their courses.
Faculty know what students should learn, but may not know that the value of each reading/assignment/etc. needs to be communicated to students. Based on student survey data, if students don't understand the value of a course item, they're less likely to complete it. This also affects students' overall engagement with the course.
Challenge
Educate instructors on how to add content that increases student engagement.
Educate instructors on how to add content that increases student engagement.
Solution
Use placeholder text to provide instructions on what content to add and why.
Use placeholder text to provide instructions on what content to add and why.
When taking an online course, all the distractions of the internet are just a tab away.
Students need online course content to be clear and engaging to help ensure their success. For every item of course content, students need to be told what they need to do, how they need to do it, and why they need to do it.
Value needs to be communicated in a way that aligns with students' academic and personal goals. All content needs to display a clear purpose.
Challenge
Help faculty clearly communicate content completion requirements to decrease student confusion in this area.
Help faculty clearly communicate content completion requirements to decrease student confusion in this area.
Solution
Write microcopy that allows students to see content types at a glance to help them gauge the time to completion. Incorporate a narrative flow and a course voice into the microcopy to help students feel supported and establish a rhythm for completing content.
Write microcopy that allows students to see content types at a glance to help them gauge the time to completion. Incorporate a narrative flow and a course voice into the microcopy to help students feel supported and establish a rhythm for completing content.
The course navigation menu was hard to read at glance.
Students often had issues navigating within online courses. Unfortunately, we weren't able to change any of the menu's styling to modify its size, color, or the color and styles of the text. Still, we felt there was an opportunity for improvement.
Challenge
Make the course navigation menu easy for all users to read at a glance, despite not being able to change any of the menu's styling.
Make the course navigation menu easy for all users to read at a glance, despite not being able to change any of the menu's styling.
Solution
Standardize copy for menu items to improve clarity, establish a hierarchy within the menu, and use icons to give each menu item a unique visual identity. This would make navigation easier, and the symbols added a little fun to courses.
Standardize copy for menu items to improve clarity, establish a hierarchy within the menu, and use icons to give each menu item a unique visual identity. This would make navigation easier, and the symbols added a little fun to courses.
I've also created a presentation with a little more detail for this case study.
After the project was completed, I created a comprehensive presentation on all aspects of its creation, which you're welcome to view as well.
And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!